Draft West Midlands Combined Authority Order 2016

Jim Cunningham Excerpts

Monday 6th June 2016 General Committees

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Mr Davies, on being in the Chair. I think this is the first time I have attended a Committee with you in the Chair.

For the record, I have been in local government and have been the leader of a council. I was also chairman of the seven districts, so I do have a bit of experience in local government. I was a West Midlands councillor and, just to set the record straight, am also the Member of Parliament for Coventry South.

This discussion takes me back to the setting up of the metropolitan councils. We all remember when they set up the metropolitan councils. When it did not work out very well for the Government, they abolished them. The Thatcher Government abolished them, but it was the Heath Government that created them.

There are a number of serious issues that we have to think about. For example, the Minister says that they have consulted local authorities. Why did they not consult the public, given that, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley just said, the people of Coventry and the people of Birmingham rejected this idea? Yet the Government went ahead. At the same time, local councillors in Coventry and outside of Coventry were trying to say that Coventry’s local authority and other Labour authorities were denying them the right to a referendum. In actual fact, whether we had had a referendum or not, the Chancellor had made his mind up that this was going to go ahead regardless.

The Minister has said that at this stage, the Government are not considering elected mayors. Elected mayors are at the bottom of this but, more importantly, the strategy has been to shift away from central Government the responsibility for paying for local services. That is the fundamental point. That is why local government in the west midlands region and up and down the country has had considerable cuts over the past five or six years. We should not lose track of that, because the Government are shifting the responsibility for funding the police, fire, certain aspects of social services and possibly the health service.

That leads me to another issue. Regardless of what the Government say, they certainly will be levying some form of precept. The Government have said that they want to move power from the centre to local areas. If they are going to move power from the top to the bottom, they should go to the bottom—local authorities—and not do it through the region. This deal is totally undermining local authorities. In other words, this is phase 2 of a long-term programme of the Conservative party, and this Government have picked up where previous Conservative Governments left off.

I cannot think of any local authority in the west midlands that really wants this deal, but the authorities know that if they do not go ahead with it, they could be subject to certain sanctions—for example, a reduction in any grants they may get from central Government. In the Chancellor’s Budget statement, he said that grants to local authorities were going to be removed over a period. That goes back to my original point, which is that the underlying strategy is to shift responsibility for funding local services away from central Government.

I find this deal very difficult to support, to say the least, but local authorities have agreed to go down this road. More importantly, the deal will not bring an economic miracle in the west midlands, because that miracle has already started. In answer to one of my questions in the Chamber earlier on, the Minister acknowledged that things were taking off in the Coventry and Warwickshire areas. That is less because of central Government involvement and more because of local authority and local business involvement.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Warley said, it looks as though Warwickshire could be an associate member. I do not think it will be a full member at this stage, but at some point—reluctantly, I add—it will get involved in this deal, because it has been put under a lot of pressure from central Government. My experience tells me that when this deal does not work out in 10 years’ time, the Government will abolish it and come up with something else.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Wharton]

That is another comparison to draw. As we know, council tax more or less doubled under the previous Labour Administration. It has reduced in real terms by 9% over the past six years. That reduction has helped many of the people we represent, and many of the people represented by what we are discussing today. I commend Councillor Bob Sleigh not only for his leadership on this issue, but for ensuring that this is a cross-party proposal. The deal has been agreed across the parties and it will deliver real benefits to those communities.

[Mr Cunningham]

It should be pointed out that Solihull agreed to get involved in the new set-up for the west midlands authority fairly recently; it was opposed initially.

[James Wharton]

The hon. Gentleman, sharp and observant as always, puts his finger on the key issue: this is something that more and more areas want to be part of. They see what is happening and the benefits, and they want to sign up. It is a bottom-up process. It is not being imposed by the Government; it is a matter of local areas coming together, putting forward proposals and reaching an agreement.

This is a good proposal for the west midlands, which will help to bring together those local authorities that want to drive economic growth and build on what has already been done. I commend it unreservedly to the Committee. I trust that the Committee will support it, and I hope that the support in this place will be cross-party, as it is in those local communities that stand to benefit from what we will hopefully agree to today.

Question put and agreed to.